


Wherhandler

by Rhizophora



Category: Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: Bitra Hold, F/M, Fourth Interval, M/M, Watch-Whers (Dragonriders of Pern)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-16 05:53:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14805611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhizophora/pseuds/Rhizophora
Summary: As the Fourth Interval drags on with no sign of Threadfall, Bitra's ruling family seeks to turn this new era of prosperity to their advantage.  With the menace of Thread seemingly behind them Benden Weyr and the Plains Wherhold are little more than obstacles on the road to power.  A disgruntled Bitran Holdguard and his bronze watch-wher aren't very good at playing the hero, but with no one else available they'll have to do.  They'll have to try, at least.





	Wherhandler

**Author's Note:**

> Wherhandler takes place during the Fourth Interval (the First Long Interval), many Turns after the establishment of the Plains Wherhold during the Third Pass. Most characters are original with the exception of a few canon mentions. Whers are slightly more clever than they are in canon. This story is a writing exercise for me; as such, I don't have much planned out but the major story arc and I don't know which warnings to include yet! Expect graphic sex, violence, and death.

## \- 1 -

### The Run

It happened in the evening, as disaster so often did. Most of the wherhandlers were still eating their evening mean when the little green wher shrieked her challenge, stamping her taloned feet and fanning her tattered wings, and then she set off. She raced down the long corridor that led to her pen and charged into the stableyard beyond, plunging through a gaggle of fat little wherries and scattering them to every corner of Bitra Hold. No time to snap at their heels, no! No time, no time, no time at all! She thought only of Away, and Away, and Away.

_**Beksk chases!** _

The bronze wher’s silent shout was accompanied by a torrent of images, few of them especially appealing to his human handler. Draybeasts reeling back at the bronze’s passage. The swift green wher’s tail whipping behind her as she fled the Hold, seeking out the wider vistas beyond. One of those fat little wherries spilling its slippery viscera into the dirt as Beksk tore it to pieces in his passion and his fury.

Grand. Sharding wonderful. Bekar grimaced at his half-eaten dinner-breakfast, unsettled by thoughts of the wherry’s violent end and thoroughly irritated by his wher’s carelessness. Those draybeasts belonged to a trading caravan, if Bekar had it right. He doubted whether travel-hardened traders would be intimidated by a single galloping watch-wher, but he was certain they’d complain. They would demand apologies and higher prices. They would draw trouble down on wher and handler both, and Bekar was not eager to stand before one of Lord Callen’s stewards with his head bowed in penitence. Again.

“Veesk is running again? Second time this Turn.” There was a note of sympathy in Tomlin’s voice. The bluehandler’s wher hadn’t chased a female in in all the Turns. Some injury or some defect, Bekar supposed, though he’d never asked. Tomlin’s wher and its manhood (wherhood?) were no business of his.

“Second time,” Bekar said, forcing the words out through gritted teeth. Beksk’s lust was a surging tide, raw and red and vicious, eroding the wall of his anger without much effort. The sensation wasn’t nearly as powerful as the affliction dragonriders struggled with, as Bekar understood it, but it was still enough to sweep aside a man’s common sense.

“You can go, y’know. Me and Tosk, we can take this watch.”

Bekar frowned. “I’m not a rider, Tomlin. I can handle myself.”

“While your wher’s out chasing? Oh, go on, go. Remember last time—”

That was enough to drive the bronzehandler from his seat. Waking up next to Tomlin, who was altogether too muscular and too male for his tastes, was not an experience he had any desire to repeat. “All right! Tomlin, I’ll want a report. With details!”

It was a petty threat. Tomlin’s grin followed him from the dining hall, but Bekar’s attention soon drifted from his irritatingly astute friend. He wanted what Beksk wanted. He felt the wher’s feet pounding against dry earth and sparse grass, felt the lunatic pulse of the wher’s thoughts reeling through his head. Felt the crisp air, drawn into the great bellows of the wher’s lungs. The wher’s lust. The wher’s outrage at the presence of other males beside him. Flash of teeth. Rage. Pain. Away. On and on. Away, and away, and away.

Human things, now, and Bekar’s thoughts were too muddled to understand exactly how he’d gotten here. Exactly how he’d gotten her. Veera, the green wher’s handler, was somewhere else. With someone else, quite likely, and Bekar didn’t care. There was a woman in his arms, drawing him into the smoky little den where men drank and gambled, and Bekar went willingly.

She wore a dust-veil over her mouth and nose, hiding everything but her merry brown eyes, but even with a cup of wine in his hand and Beksk’s rabid lust drumming in his heart Bekar was sober enough to know that this woman was no traveller. No trader. If that elegant scrap of pale silk had ever seen dust, Bekar would eat his bronze whole. The woman was a Bitran, then, amusing herself with a trip to this bar to drink and game and fuck a rough wherhandler, and Bekar’s need was too great for him to bridle at it.

Later, maybe. Later.

Now: he would have taken her to his own room, but the woman with the laughing eyes and the veil drew him down unfamiliar corridors. She had her standards, apparently. She would take a wherhandler to bed, but not to _his_ bed.

As they spilled into her room and onto her bed, laughing and fumbling with their clothes, Bekar had to admit that she had the superior mattress. The thought flickered through his head and was promptly discarded in favour of other, more pressing thoughts. She rolled beneath him, soft and yielding, and as the wherhandler drove himself into her she dug her nails into his back.

She was a wild thing, twisting beneath him and laughing as he sank his teeth into her shoulder. The silk veil lay forgotten on the rich carpet beneath her bed. His mind was lost in her, in the heat of her and the taste of her. She called out a name—not his. Didn’t matter. He felt her beneath him, tight and slick about his cock, and he felt packed earth beneath feet that were not his. The twinned moons at his back. His breath, hot and swift and ragged. The woman beneath him. The bright pain of her nails. Away, away.

They laid together for a while, each tangled up in each, with Bekar’s arm flung possessively across the woman’s waist and her gaze fixed on nothing in particular. She was beautiful without the mask, beautiful with her dark hair unbound and tumbling out of its tight plaits. Freckles dusted her shoulder. He would remember them, long after he had forgotten her face. How light they were. How soft she was.

“My name is Carina,” she said, without turning to meet his gaze.

“I know,” said the wherhandler, for every Holdguard knew the members of the Lord Holder’s family. He had known Lord Callen’s precious youngest daughter as soon as she laughed beneath that sharding veil.

“I’m to be married,” said Carina, turning at last. Her gaze met his: bright, warm, soft. No longer merry, exactly, but still full of light. “It’s all arranged. The envoys from Benden met with father this morning.”

“I know,” said Bekar. He laughed, risking Carina’s wrath, and after a moment her incredulous stare dissolved and she joined him. She pressed herself against him, there in her luxurious bed, and Bekar responded despite the distant wherish disappointment rolling through the bond. Beksk had lost his chase. The wherhandler’s rising lust was his alone.

The loud rap at Carina’s chamber door was about as welcome as a bucket of icy water.


End file.
